I like my gadgets, I like them a lot and unfortunately I don't have enough of them. So (shameless plug) if you want to send me gadgets I'll certainly talk about them. Even still, I have a few gadgets around me and I have the good fortune to work in a research department programming for new gadgets although they are for a very narrow market. Technology is technology and I like any technology.

Just now, looking around in my immediate field of view I can count more than a bakers dozen of different gadgets surrounding me. Some of them I am actively working on. Some of them I have recently worked on and some of them are not in active use at the moment but will, possibly, maybe be used in the future.

Granted some of these gadgets are not for general public consumption but many of them are and people will have them. Little things like bluetooth dongles, usb hubs, telephones, portable hard disks and fancy schmancy mice. I am sure that you have or have had very similar devices in your possession at one time or an other.

In the preceding paragraph I used the phrase "general public consumption" and that is a key phrase. These little gadgets and knicknacks are designed and built to enhance our lives in an electronic manner and they are also priced at a point that buying and replacing them is not a bank breaking endeavour (wow! I hadn't used that word in a long time :) ).

Thus comes the consumption part. We buy these gadgets and either forget about them when they lose their impulse buy flavour or upgrade them for the next latest and greatest iteration of that particular gadget. Hands up those of you who have more than one old mobile phone floating around not being used (I still have an old mobile phone I brought with me from Australia nearly eighteen years ago).

So we keep buying these technological doo dads for our pleasure or work and then continue buying more and more, newer and newer, bigger, brighter, more powerful and, and, and . . . . . You get the idea. This is the good thing about gadgets and what I like the best.

The bad thing is that these little technological marvels are nasty things for the environment in general. They are made of materials which are really hazardous for the environment and are a lot of the time thrown into the trash and consequently end up in landfills. The process of making these gadgets is also not environmentally friendly either. Yet we keep on buying them and continuing the circle of supply and demand while at the same time complaining about the ever hotter summers, droughts and increasingly powerful natural disasters.

As the saying goes, every rose has it's thorns however, it seems to me that we really need to find a way to turn those thorns into something more beneficial for the environment. As quickly as possible. What do you think? Tell us in the comments below.

Some name

I've always been fascinated with graphics and wrote my first drawing program on the venerable apple ][e. After discovering the x86 IBM clones and wrangling my way into the computer industry I'm now immersed in work as a Computer Engineer, System Administrator, OS builder (Linux from Scratch and Android) and general techno-head.